Day 13 – Ask KFC for their recipe

It’s finger lickin’ good. I don’t know if you know, but Colonel Sanders (the man who made Kentucky Fried Chicken) went more than mildly crazy in his old age. If you don’t believe me, take a listen to these Colonel Sanders outtakes. Classic.

“How can I help you?
“Well, I was wondering if I could get your 11 secret herbs and spices.”
“What?”
“Could you tell me the 11 secret herbs and spices?”
“I don’t know ’em.”
“OK, well, could you give me an ingredience list for the chicken?”
“OK, hold on.”
She went behind the counter and was gone for along time. A pretty long line grew behind me until she finally returned.
“We don’t have any of the lists left. And I don’t know what’s in ’em ’cause they just come to us in frozen boxes and we heat ’em up.”
“Could I have one of the boxes?”
“No.”

I was defeated. So I proceeded to call 18 different KFC’s. Most of them just told me that they couldn’t give out that info, and that I should check http://www.kfc.com (which I did…nothing). However one of them was pretty helpful.

“Bloomington KFC, how can I help you?”
“Yeah, I was wondering if you could give me the list of 11 herbs and spices on the chicken.”
“$5.99 for a four piece, $7.99 for a 12 piece bucket, $12-”
“No, no, no. Not prices. Spices. Herbs and spices.”
“Oh. Hmm. I’ll ask the mananger.”
(at this point she held the phone away from her face, but I could still hear her.)
[“This guy wants to know the 11 herbs and spices….Ok.”]
“My manager says that it’s a secret and we can’t give that out.”
“Well, I have allergies and I can’t have certain spices.”
“Why don’t you tell me what your allergic to, and I’ll tell you if you can eat our chicken.”
“Sure. I’m allergic to oregano and thyme. Are those in it?”
“Hang on, I’ll check…[Are oregano and thyme in the chicken?…Let’s see….OK]…It actually doesn’t say on the package. Here are the ingredience on the package…Chicken, Flour, Salt, Pepper, Garlic, Herbs & Spices, and MSG.”
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t eat it if I’m not sure what’s in it, huh?”
“I guess not, but I can’t imagine that there’d be oregano in it.”
“Thanks a lot.”

So I looked the ingredience up online. It’s a good thing I wasn’t allergic to oregano and thyme, ’cause I coulda sued them…maybe. Here’s the list I found:

After I got back from “The Constant Gardener” (which was amazingly great), I fired up the stove and made Kentucky Fried Seitan (i’m afraid to eat chicken, ’cause I don’t wanna get bird flu…thanks Dad) with my new found recipe. My god, it was good. So much better than KFC.

I’ll leave you with a Neil Hamburger joke:

Q: Why did Kentucky Fried Chicken change its name to simply KFC?
A: Because they were ashamed that the state’s S.A.T. scores were so poor.

4 Responses to “Day 13 – Ask KFC for their recipe”

Those herbs and spices aren’t very secret. I’ve heard of and used each one. To be truly secret they’d have to have spices I’ve never heard of, like, asafoetida, cardamom, filé powder, or kaffir lime Leaves (all real, looked them up on Wiki.) Or, if the spices were things like human sweat, boiled rubber, printer ink toner, and powder from ground up insides of baseballs. THEN it’d be secret.